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Comment by mysterydip | Hacker News Reader

"Lifetime buys" are a thing, and also can be expensive because you don't always have a good estimate when doing so. Either you buy too many and waste $ with excess stock, or you don't buy enough then 10 years later have to scrounge for more stock at higher prices, or come up with a replacement.

It's a tough problem.

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Let's assume we actually get 50 Virginia class submarines (whims of Congress, and all that). Let's assume we need on average 3 controllers per year. That's a total of 5,000 XBox controller.

At $20 a piece, the pentagon has now spent $10,000. This is not what in military spending passes for excess $ :) Yes, the numbers might be somewhat off, and there's storage cost, but really - we're talking Pentagon here. The place of the infamous $640 toilet seat :) (I know, the price got reduced to $100. Still, on the scale of Pentagon procurement, a lifetime buy of XBox controllers is pretty trivial)

Not to mention making a controller would be trivial for a DoD contractor. I feel like some people in this thread want it both ways. If they see a contractor reinventing the wheel by making a custom xbox-like controller for god knows how much money they'll get criticized. If the DoD buys off-the-shelf parts then they'll get criticized as well.

I think when its come to HIDs like controllers or keyboards, off the shelf is fine. We can have the exact same conversation for Dell keyboards or 3rd party keyboards and mice.

There is hardly a thing, like a wasted hardware in the military. For such a purchase you do not make a guess and buy. You make a guess, multiply it by 3 and then buy. Cost saved by going for customer grade electronics vs. specialized will easily justify this. You will still be saving lots of money.

I didn't say you wouldn't save compared to some other solution. I said it's not as simple as just buying. You'll have loss no matter your estimate.

And as I said to a sibling comment below, you can't always just buy excess. You have budgets you need to stay under, to support everything you handle.

Consumer grade is not the same as buying from the same places we buy, either. You have to use approved vendors, which add their own markup. What you or I may buy for $5 might only be available for $25.

"There is hardly a thing, like a wasted hardware in the military." Care to share what hollywood movie this is coming from?

[*] https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

mysterydip, you're doing a lot of posting and not listening to some of these very good answers.

First. No, lifetime buys are not always a tough problem. While they can be tough, consumer grade electronics have to be the best product to predict lifetime buys on due to clear end of life and good data on mean time to failure.

Second. Let's do some math. Let's assume a 30 year operation. There are 48 of this sub planned. Let's say for some reason they go through 3 a year. At $30 each, we're looking at $130k to outfit the entire fleet of subs for their operational lifetime. Or, we could buy about 3.5 of the existing joystick, not even enough to outfit the 4 subs that are already in operation.

Lastly, it is likely that a 3rd party would take over the manufacture of these devices when they end of life anyway. It's a popular consumer electronic after all. The government would just buy a bunch then, reducing lifetime warehouse costs and getting better data to predict the lifetime buy.

It's probably also worth comparing to the cost of a bespoke solution. If it takes two engineers six months to design and test, you'll have spent more on their salaries alone than on your projected lifetime buy (which itself doesn't even account for any bulk discount).

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply it's always a problem, or even in this specific case. Just that it can be, something for people to think about.

The problem comes when you start going through 3 a year, but then say 5 years down the road you start going through 15 a year. There could be a premature wear issue, some bug, an update from a related system, whatever. But you can't always plan for those, and it can come back to bite you. And whomever has the inventory at that time can have quite a markup.

For what it's worth, I think this controller idea is excellent.

Next to the cost of a submarine I believe "excess stock" inefficiencies will be unnoticeable. Probably compared to the cost of custom hardware, too.

The issue is there's a difference between where the money comes from (capex vs opex for a simplified and incorrect example). Your support areas don't get the same budget as your construction areas. And when money runs out for the year you still have to keep thinngs running.

And while I agree that excess stock costs pale in comparison to a sub or boat, multiply that by every part necessary to keep one operational, and then face all the people every year who say the defense budget needs cut.

A company could buy the schematics and manufacture their own to Navy spec.

They could, but then we'd be back to a $30,000 controller.

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